Mayor Bloomberg using hot pieces like Trey Songz in his Wakeup! NYC campaign to keep kids in school

Posted at February 11, 2011 by Julie J 1 Comment

With the help of The Most Beautiful Man in the World (I shouldn’t have to explain who that is), the $100 Million Mayor announced yesterday that he is launching the first multimedia campaign to encourage kids to come to class. The campaign was developed by the Mayor’s Interagency Task Force on Truancy and Chronic Absenteeism, led by the Chief Policy Advisor John Feinblatt.

The campaign will include automated wakeup calls in the morning to a targeted group of 25 schools whose principals have volunteered to be on the task force. 98.7 KISS FM, Hot 97 FM, and 101.9 RXP will tell kids over the radio to go to school. Viacom and BET are also partners, so I suppose that means that Terrence J and Rocsi will tell kids to go to school while they’re watching 106 & Park. I guess if they can get the kids to school, first, then they can tell them to do their homework. Other celebrities who are lending their voices to prerecorded messages are Magic Johnson, Jose Reyes, Big Boi, Terrence J and Rocsi, Trey Songz, and supposedly some others from program partners Viacom.

I see a couple problems with this plan. Granted, it’s not during elections, but people were downright nasty if you called them, or even nastier if you sent out a robocall. Give people a means, and well, they’ll be mean. The moral of that story, though, is that people don’t like being called and they’re dumb so they’ll think you’re soliciting when you’re telling them to make sure their kid goes to class (or turn your ballot in). Instead of being in the evening, though, these will be in the morning. An early call like this would not encourage me to go to school, especially if it was Rocsi on the other line.

NYC Department of Education via CL